Posted on 04/05/2005 5:16:11 PM PDT by Crackingham
A tiny percentage of students in Washington's most troubled public schools applied for private school vouchers under the nation's first federally funded program, according to an Education Department report released Tuesday. Only 79 applications - 4 percent of the total - came from 15 Washington schools designated as in need of improvement under the No Child Left Behind Act. All were awarded scholarships of up to $7,500 to pay tuition, fees and transportation expenses for nonpublic elementary or secondary schools in the current school year. By contrast, 518 eligible applicants came from private schools. Only 43 percent of those students got vouchers. Of the 1,251 other public school students who applied, 85 percent were admitted into the program.
"Parents whose students are already (in private school) want public assistance to help their students remain there," said Roxanne Evans, spokeswoman for D.C. Public Schools. "That's one of the tragedies of vouchers - that private school students use public money to fund private education."
Legislators stood by their creation.
"Even with limited time for outreach, the program attracted participation by more than half of the private schools in the District, providing parents and students with dozens of diverse and well-established private options," said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., a principal backer.
More than half of participating schools are Catholic. They are smaller and have lower student-teacher ratios than the city's public schools, and tuition for most is less than the $7,500 maximum paid by vouchers. To be eligible for school vouchers, students entering grades K-12 must live in low-income households in the District. Scholarships can be renewed for up to five years. Schools must agree to requirements regarding nondiscrimination and fiscal accountability.
Yeah, tragic.....wouldn't want that....and we certainly wouldn't want to focus on the goal of better education for kids.....
Why is that tragic? What are we funding? A child's education? If so, why should it matter if the institution is public or private? The funding should follow the student, not the institution. But then, if it is the public institution you are concerned with, not the student, then maybe this is tragic.
That was the line that struck me too.
It was that mind-meld thingy I used on you.....
That is no tragedy, it is simple justice! These parents are already paying into the public school fiasco. How many of these students are live in districts with failing schools? I notice that they did not ask they question.
Give the parents a choice, and all the schools will improve through competition.
That's rich -- using the word "tragedy."
I think it's a tragedy that public schools waste vast oceans of money for results that are very mediocre (at best).
It's a tragedy that lots of kids (especially minority kids) are locked into awful schools by teacher's unions.
Legislators stood by their creation
Ahhh, agenda journalism at it's finest. I especially like the language of the second quote because the word "creation" conjures up an image of something akin to Frankenstein's Monster...but I'm sure that we aren't supposed to get something like that from the sentence. :-)
Today's educationnews.org. has a couple of stories on vouchers and why we shouldn't have them -- they'll just take too much money from the public schools.
The story says that the students must come from low income families in the District.
This story is disgraceful. DC has the highest spending per pupil in the nation and the lowest test scores. The maximum number of students that could under law have fled the public schools since charter and voucher laws have passed.
from http://www.neoperspectives.com/schoolchoice.htm
Charter schools and voucher school are popular wherever they are implemented and often cater to the most disadvantaged students. Yet our Government forces us to spend our own tax dollars at the public school closest to us. This is especially harmful to the poorest communities because they often can't afford to move.
Washington D.C. spends the most (depending on the time period, some sources say 2nd most) per pupil in the entire country and have the worst test scores (218), (219), (220). On December 23, 2003, from the Associated Press (on CNN) :
President Bush wants to use Washington as a test case for using taxpayer money to send children to private and religious schools. Under a five-year plan pushed by Republicans and agreed to by congressional negotiators, $13 million would be provided to let at least 1,700 poor children attend private or parochial schools. In return, D.C. public schools would get an extra $13 million in federal funds. (why are they so afraid?)
Board of Education member Dwight E. Singleton opposed the idea.
"Charter schools and private school vouchers are instruments of exploitation and experimentation that members of Congress are reluctant to impose in their home states," he said.
Singleton and some other board members said Congress does not spend enough on the capital's schools. And they want more time for the board to implement changes made in the last two years. (216) (emphasis and underlining mine)
What do we find? The same tired old story; teachers unions and education associations, who one would think would place the success of their pupils in the highest consideration, are actually doing their utmost to preserve the status quo and minimize the learning of their students. More money won't fix the problem because money isn't the problem! Here is a member of the D.C. Board of Education, whose schools spend almost 50% more per pupil then the national average, demanding more money! We have the same demagaugery that we saw with Welfare Reform; public schools will go bankrupt, students will fail, minorities will be hurt.. yada yada yada... We find the same shoddy reporting going on in the press. Contrary to what the D.C. council person claims, 38 states passed Charter school legislation and over half a million students across the country are enrolled in them. (217) The story continues:
The problems are prompting some parents to remove children from public schools. Enrollment has fallen nearly 16 percent since 1998, from 77,111 to 65,099. During that period, 10,147 students chose instead to enroll in the 22 publicly funded charter schools created in the city. (216)
The bill was eventually passed, despite Democratic objections and a close vote in the Senate. The Washington Post ran a story on June 23rd, 2004 (221):
Shorter, 33, could not have afforded the Catholic school's tuition in the past. But her children were among 1,249 low-income students selected last week to receive the District's first tax-funded private-school vouchers, and she wanted them to be first on the school's list.
The public schools in Southeast Washington that her children have attended have low scores and limited programs, she said, "and I want them to be able to get all kinds of learning."
Shorter and the families of more than 500 other voucher recipients jammed into the small building, now called the Thurgood Marshall Center Trust, Monday evening and yesterday afternoon to visit tables staffed by representatives of 44 private D.C. schools that have agreed to participate in the program.
She and the other parents soon learned that arriving early did not boost their children's chances of getting into any particular school. The voucher holders still need to submit formal applications to the schools that interest them, and the schools will determine which students qualify for admission after reviewing their records.
But the line to get into the school fair was an indication of the excitement among the families who will be pioneers in the school-choice initiative, which Congress approved in January.
The vouchers are worth up to $7,500 per child. Of the students who won grants for this fall, 1,049 attend public school or are about to start kindergarten, and those entering a grade in which the program had more applicants than slots were selected through a lottery. The remaining 200 voucher winners already are enrolled in private school but met the income guidelines for the federal assistance; they also were picked by lottery. (221)
Notice that the $7,500 is less than the over $10,000 per pupil the District spends on it's public schools. Allowing parents instead of government to choose where to spend money for their child's education can only result in a positive outcome. Once again the Republicans do the most to aid the poor (and largely minority) children of D.C. while liberal blacks and other Democrats do their utmost to prevent progress.
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